Daddy's Girl
by Country Timelord
Summary: Why did he look so sad? The one-shot that kicked off the "Daddy's Girl Series."
1. Chapter 1

**Daddy's Girl**

Scared, I'm so scared. I don't know what's going on. Everything was safe warm and soft, but now what is this? It's so loud I can't…I can't think. Why am I dangling upside down? This isn't fun. I'm crying. Why am I crying? How should I know? It just feels like the right thing to do right now.

Warmth and love…two strong gentle arms…

I'm safe…I feel safe…I don't have to cry anymore…I'm loved.

I want to open my eyes and see this new found source of comfort. Slowly my eyelids cooperate with me, and I see him. He looks so proud, so bewildered, but why does he look so sad.

"Your mother loved you," he whispers. "Remember that, she wanted to meet you so much, but…"

He trailed off and raised me to his lips to touch me in the most strange and caring way.


	2. Chapter 2

**Chapter 2**

I shove my hands in my pockets and walk down the street from the hospital. The sun is setting now, but I'm only a mile from our house in a suburb of London. Tony wanted me to stay with him, but I retorted that I'm sixteen and perfectly capable of being alone in a house for just one night. Besides I've got the sonic Dad gave me; I can defend myself against burglars and put up those shelves that Dad's been planning on doing for a long while.

Unlocking the door, I'm met by an extremely anxious ferret.

"Hey, Greyson," I greet, picking him up and holding him against my chest.

He grunts worriedly wriggling from my grasp immediately and scurrying behind my legs and searching for Dad.

"Sorry, Buddy, He's not coming home for a while."

I tried to sleep—honesty I did— but I found it impossible. Thoughts of Dad in the hospital assaulted my thoughts, so I picked up Greyson and gently rested him on my shoulder. That's where Dad kept him when he was home.

"11:23 pm," I mutter to the less than content ferret.

He shuffled more and pushed his face into the back of my neck. Collapsing into a heavily upholstered chair, I hear a vague scratching from the backdoor. I standup quickly, while a startled Greyson scurries down my arm.

"Sampson," I mutter, as I hurry to open the door, letting a large black lab barrel from the fenced back yard.

He places his paws on my shoulders and knocks me down hard on the wood floor, as the phone rings.

"Oof," I groan, as I push him off of me. "Geroff unless you wanna get the phone."

Sampson hops off at my griping, and I catch the phone on the last ring.

"Hello?" I answer, trying to sound like I just woke up.

"Sarah," Tony's voice greets me.

"Hey, Tony," I reply. "Is Dad driving everyone up a wall?"

I know Dad, and he can't sit still for a minute without being a right pain.

"Not exactly," Tony says. "Listen, I'm gonna be over in a minute we can talk 'bout it then, bye."

"Bye," I whisper, as Tony hangs up and the dial tone fills my ear.

Sampson dozes on the couch by the time that the doorbell rings telling me that Tony had arrived.

I turn the door knob to hear Tony's voice.

"You really should keep that door locked when you're here all by yourself," he admonishes.

"Yeah," I reply, not really listening staring down at my feet and trying to keep tears from flowing. I know what they're gonna tell me. He's gone I know he is.

"Sarah, the Doctor's…"

"He's gone isn't he?" I find myself blurting.

"What? No, he's still with us, but…" Tony says quickly. "He's taken a bit of a turn for the worse. He had surgery while you were in school, but some of the sutures tore when he had some sort of seizure, he was bleeding internally when River called me at home, so I came to get you and bring you to be with him once he gets out of this surgery."

"Okay," I say, before I let the full weight of the words sink in. "Let me just get ready then,"

I point up the stairs and feel my legs begin to shake.

"Let me give you a hand," Tony says, as gestures towards the stairs.

I nod mutedly.

In my mind the waiting room is even worse than the sterile hallways of the hospital. It's trying so hard to feel like home that it just feels wrong. The scratchy cushions on the chairs and the smell of old magazines seem like they're about to suffocate me when the wooden door cracks open, and man that looks far too young to be one of my classmates, let alone Dad's supposed 'skilled' surgeon. No wonder something went wrong.

I get to my feet and try to read him, but his stoic face reveals nothing. Not so inexperienced then, I suppose.

"Sarah Smith?" he asks.

"That's me," I said, rocking back on the balls of my feet and forcing a smile.

"I'm Dr. Saltus Kelly, I'm your father's primary surgeon," the doctor said, running his hand through his sandy hair.

I nod trying so hard to focus on the doctor's words, but my mind seems to drift in every other direction. I guess my brain wants to be anywhere but here as well. We want to be by Dad's side.

"Your father is out of surgery, and has been moved to intensive care…" he pauses as if he is afraid of the words that he is going to utter next; I know I am. "He has a less than a fifty percent chance of making it through the night let alone the week."

"What's actually wrong though?" I ask steeling myself. "And don't glaze over it either, I want to know."

"You know that he suffered outside trauma right? Internal bleeding and all that?"

I nod slowly.

"We treated that to the best of our ability, but there was a problem," the doctor paused and peered at me through thin wired framed spectacles. "He had damage to his brain—bleeding—but it's hard to detect or notice symptoms this early on with just the standard x-rays we used. Most victims of this type of injury don't show symptoms until later on and it tends to happen suddenly and quickly…he's in bad shape, Sarah."

The doctor may or may not have said something after those words, but they slammed into me so hard that I felt my knees buckle under me and the room started spinning.

Tony stepped up from behind me and caught me as I fell and turned me in his arms. I clung to his shirt trying to stop the tears that ran in constant streams down my cheeks.

"Shh," Tony soothes, before he turns to the doctor. "When can we see him?"

"Tomorrow," the doctor replies, showing no signs of yielding.

"We can't see him now?" Tony asked for me. "We'll only be a minute."

The doctor's eyes flicked from me and back to Tony, as if he were sizing us up.

"Only a minute," the doctor punctuated the words with a raised finger, before pulling Tony to the side. The doctor muttered something in his ear. He made sure that I wouldn't be able to make it put, but I knew it was along the lines of "watch her; make sure she doesn't have a massive emotional breakdown, because obviously that would be bad form and there would be no calls for it."

Tony nodded his response and extended his hand to the doctor and gave it a firm shake.

I made Tony wait in the hallway. He protested, but I wanted—_needed_—to be alone with Dad. There was a 'privacy' curtain surrounding his bed as I walked in. Gently pulling the curtain to the side I expose a man. He had lanky a lanky build, an angular face and dark brown hair, but he's not Dad. He's not my daddy. No, my daddy was strong, he didn't fall this far even when he was at his worst.

My mind practically screams these thoughts at me, but my heart sings something else. It tells me that my daddy is still in there, trapped in a broken body, but still there and it was up to me to get him out—to set him ifree/i.

His starkly pale face seemed to blend into the white hospital sheets. A breathing tube forcing air into his lungs was shoved painfully deep into his throat. His hands always so strong when they held me through ever tear seemed withered and thin, how had he degraded so much in less than a day. How could this have happened at all?

The item in my hand suddenly gains mass and grows heavy. I smile.

I shift the rectangular object in my hands and reveal the picture Dad never let leave his bedside table. A woman with the same blonde hair as mine and a slim figure smiled back at me. A strong arm was looped around her waist leading up to the figure of my father, before his hair was speckled with grey and his smile lines deepened.

"Hey, Mum," I whisper. "Dad said you looked after him and saved him so many times when you were still around, and I need you to do that now. Save him, please, just look over him, keep him company, and love him like I can't."

I ran my fingers over Mum's smiling face before placing the frame on the small stack of drawers next to Dad's bed.

"Mum's gonna look after you Dad," I told his motionless form. "I love you."

I give his knuckles a final squeeze before I turn to leave.


End file.
